


Oasis

by Scribe



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conversation is different in Las Vegas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oasis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seascribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/gifts).



> Happy birthday Seascribe! 
> 
> Content notes: some violence, some sex, very vague references to dubcon. This is unbeta'd, apologies for any errors.

Conversation is different in Las Vegas. Words are slick, complicated, double-dealers. There are, Ray finds, two languages being spoken at almost all times, and if you want to do anything or be anyone you'd damn well better understand them both. It seems easy on the surface; anyone could guess that _I hear your kid made honor roll_ means _I'm watching your family_ , for example, but it turns out you also have to know how to say _I hear your kid made honor roll_ and have it mean _I think we should recruit him_ , or _let's pretend this is a social visit because we're old family friends_ , and you have to be able to hear which is which. Looking back, Ray's pretty sure he accidentally got somebody killed by trying to rearrange a lunch meeting in his first week.

He catches on quickly enough, though. By the time he's been there a month he's mostly only killing people on purpose.

~

He sees her for the first time in August. He's out to dinner with a couple of the guys, one of those doubletalk meals that's just shooting the shit on the surface and nothing but business underneath. When he catches sight of her it sends a bolt of sheer panic straight through him, because he recognizes her face but he can't place who she is. For an agonizing minute he flips through the mental flashcards of everyone he's supposed to know in Vegas (is it possible there's someone he was briefed on that he hasn't met yet? Was she out of town? Doing what? Should he know?) but he comes up blank.

She's settling her tab at the bar, and for some reason it's the way she tilts her head to look at the check jogs his memory. Anita Cortez, who he and Fraser had worked security with at the free trade summit and who had invited Ray back to her hotel room after they'd finished their reports. He remembers her perfectly; he just hadn't thought of trying to place her in Ray Vecchio's life instead of Armando Langoustini's. She must be on vacation. He barely even sees the tourists anymore, except as scenery, part of the landscape but not part of Langoustini's world. It never occurred to him that he might know one of them. 

The panic comes with an adrenaline rush. He takes a sip of his wine, keeping his expression steady. He needs a way to talk to her. She can probably follow his lead, but he somehow has to get to her before she sees him across the room and says _Ray_ , or worse, _Vecchio_. It's a good thing he's had practice keeping up a conversation while his mind races to solve some other problem.

He doesn't get a chance to figure it out, in the end. A man comes out of the bathroom and Anita smiles at him, passing the pen back to the bartender and tucking the receipt into her purse, and the two of them leave without ever looking around at the back of the bar where Ray's sitting.

He should feel relieved. Instead, for some odd reason, he's almost disappointed.

He tries to avoid the casino floors and hotel lobbies for the next week or so, just to be safe. It's not hard; most of the Bookman's job is behind the scenes anyway. By all rights, that should be the end of it.

He sees her again three weeks later. 

It's in a sports bar this time, a place he doesn't outright own but does take a significant interest in. She's wearing another dress, dark red this time, and seems to be watching one of the TVs that's showing horse racing. Ray, who was headed for the office, changes direction abruptly and slides over to a table that's out of her line or sight, heart pounding. Something is off here. She shouldn't still be in Vegas, not if she's on vacation; three weeks is too long. If it isn't a vacation, though, what is she doing here? 

She could be working- maybe she's the go-to for international assignments in her department or something- but she certainly doesn't look like she's on duty, and it's a weekday afternoon. Honestly, he wouldn't have expected her to be the kind of person who wore dresses and makeup like this even off-duty. Not that he has a lot to go on, but he'd watched her pull on jeans and a sweater the morning after the LaCroix debacle. Maybe she dresses up more when she's not going to spend the day on a plane. His instincts are jangling, though. 

It takes a minute to catch the bartender's eye from his half-hidden seat, but only a minute; his face is good for fast service almost everywhere in this town, and double so in the places he owns, officially or not. He summons the kid with a twitch of his head.

"What can I get you, Mr. Langoustini? The usual?" he asks, coming to stand by the side of the table and blocking Ray's view of Anita.

"Yeah, put it on my tab," Ray tells him. The kid writes it down, even though they both know Ray doesn't have a tab- or he has an infinite one, depending on how you look at it. Nobody's ever going to make him pay for the drink, is the point.

"And tell me something," he continues. "Do you know that woman at the bar, in the red dress? I don't think I've seen her around."

The kid- his nametag says Sergio, Ray notes- takes an unsubtle look.

"That's Luz Romero," he says, and Ray blinks. "She's working for Eddy, came up from Mexico. Hasn't been in town too long.

"Hmm," says Ray, mind racing. Is it possible he's wrong, and it isn't Anita after all? He was so sure, but then again he's only alive because people he sees every day mistake him for Langoustini and it's been over a year since Anita was in Chicago.

" _Working_ for Eddy?" he asks, which means, _is it gonna cause an incident if I hit on her?_. Eddy runs a good chunk of the Vegas drug trade, and while he's on good enough terms with Langoustini, it's not such a strong relationship that it couldn't go south fast. 

"Just working, as far as I know," says Sergio. He looks proud to have the required information.

"Hmm," says Ray again. "Do me a favor, would you? Get her another of whatever she's drinking. But-" he holds up a finger when Sergio nods- "tell her who bought it when you give it to her. If she hasn't been here long she might not know, uh, the locals."

"Gotcha," says Sergio.

"And only point me out to her after, all right?" Ray finishes. The kid speaks double talk as well as the rest of them; he'll make sure she knows that turning down a drink from the Bookman might not be smart. At the very least, it should be enough to make her realize that something's going on, to stop her from calling Ray's name the minute she sees him.

He waves the kid off and settles in to wait. His stomach is queasy with nerves and he falls into the routine he's developed to mask anxiety without even thinking about it. Pick a point across the room to look at, let his eyes go unfocused like he's lost in thought, prop his chin in one hand, concentrate on breathing evenly. He's been in Vegas three and a half months. He isn't even sure he remembers what his nervous tics used to be.

His drink arrives after a minute, and a minute after that Anita in her red dress, carrying a sunset-colored drink in a tall glass. 

"So I'm told I should thank you for this," she says, taking the seat across from him and gesturing at the drink. Her English is a little more accented than he remembers, though maybe it's his memory that's at fault. Her voice is the same.

"You caught my eye the second I walked in," he says, tipping his glass toward her in invitation. She clinks hers against it gently and they both take a sip.

"I hope I didn't seem too forward," Ray tells her. "I don't usually do things like this, but there's just something about you. I know we've never met, but for some reason I feel like I already know you."

"Like we knew each other in another life?" she says, and it sounds like flirtation but her eyes are locked on his, steady and serious.

"Exactly," he says. "I'm so glad you feel it too."

"Do you believe in reincarnation, then? That you can live a life as one person and then wake up one day and be someone else entirely?"

"You know, I would have said no to that my whole life, but now I'm not so sure." _Since I met you_ , Sergio will think he means, if the kid is listening in. But Anita- and it is her, he knows it is- will understand what he's really saying. 

"I'm Luz," she says, offering her hand. He catches it and turns it gently to brush a kiss over her knuckles. Her palm is cool from holding her drink. He remembers, suddenly, being on his back in her hotel bed, pressing a kiss to the ball of her hand when she went to brush her thumb over his cheek.

"Armando Langoustini," he says. Anita laughs a coquettish little laugh that isn't hers and curls her fingers around so that for just a second she's squeezing his hand.

"Don't worry," she says. "I know exactly who you are."

 

They don't get to talk for long; she's meeting someone, and he has business to get back to. Ray doesn't ask for her phone number, but he has Nero look it up the next day. He's getting accustomed to how the little things in life run smooth for Armando Langoustini, how he can ask for the number of a woman named Luz who's recently started working for Eddy and the next time he looks up it's there waiting for him. It doesn't even matter that he can't remember her fake last name.

He knows without a doubt that he shouldn't call her, and he knows without a doubt that he's going to. It would be better for both of them if they kept their missions and their secrets and their precarious covers as far apart as possible. Instead, she agrees to go to dinner with him, and then drinks, and then another dinner, and then a show. They don't ever dare to break character, but even so it feels like he can breathe when she's with him. Finally a moment when his every word doesn't have the potential to be the mistake that kills him. It's been so long that it's like he'd forgotten air even existed.

He never finds out what Anita is doing there. Luz, supposedly, is managing one of the import-export businesses Eddy uses as a front. It makes it even more dangerous and stupid to pursue her, and that's what it looks like from the outside, Langoustini going after a girl he likes despite- or maybe because of- the fact that she works for someone else. It means she can never give in. As long as she never goes home with him, they stay on Eddy's good side. He sees an opportunity and starts running all his business with Ray through her; Ray obligingly lets her flirt him into better deals, easier terms, and everybody stays happy. He's careful to only meet her in public. She can toy with him for the sake of her boss, but the instant somebody suspects that she's actually sleeping with him her loyalty will be called into question, which means her mission will be compromised at best, and worst-

Well. They make sure to never be alone together.

Anita speaks Vegas doubletalk like she was born to it, and the two of them dip into a third layer of conversation, peppering their business with references and reminders of their old lives whenever they can get away with it. Nothing specific, nothing that could get them caught, but it's not implausible for Luz to mention meeting a crazy Canadian once, or for Armando Langoustini to have heard a story about a certain Mexican cop who was named after some kind of bird. He calls her Mexico sometimes, which any outsider would think was a nickname, not a call sign. 

There's only so much to reference, though. They barely know each other in the real world, only spent a handful of days and one breathless night together. Ray forgets that sometimes. It seems impossible that the only person he trusts, the person who's holding him together, doesn't actually know him at all.

Despite that, he doesn't hesitate for an instant when gives him a goodbye kiss on the cheek one evening and takes the opportunity to hiss _stay away from DeMartino_ in his ear. Chris DeMartino is one of Langoustini's lieutenants, high up on the food chain for a guy his age. There hasn't been a single whisper of unease about him from anyone in the mob or from his FBI handlers, but Anita says stay away and so he does, starts sending messengers instead of having meetings, trying to cut contact as much as possible without raising a fuss. He doesn't have any idea why he's doing it, but he doesn't care.

Another time, they're making simple smalltalk when she mentions that it would be nice to have Eddy out of her hair for a little while.

"He's a good boss," she assures him. "It's just that it's easier to get things done when someone isn't always hovering over your shoulder, you know? 

"I know exactly what you mean," says Ray. "I hate people watching me work, it makes me nervous." 

"I'm so glad you understand," she says, giving him a bright smile. 

The next time they meet he mentions that there's a resort just an hour or so away that he's been wanting to try.

"I was thinking of having a little business get-together," he says. "It would be a good excuse to get away from the city, none of us do that enough. Do you think Eddy could spare a day to come up?"

"Only a day? That seems awfully short."

"You're right, you're right. If we give it two days we won't have to rush anything, give people time to think over their decisions." 

She just blinks at him. 

"Or maybe three," he continues. "Make it a long weekend. It would be a shame not to get the chance to enjoy the facilities."

"I'm sure he'd be happy to come," says Anita. 

It makes him remember a production of _Annie_ that Frannie's school had done when they were kids, the scene where Annie is silently hinting to the woman who's trying to adopt her until she gets all the specifics right. Frannie had been one of the orphans. She'd been furious about not getting the lead, complaining for weeks about how it wasn't fair that the one girl in the class who had red hair got to be Annie even though Frannie could sing _and_ dance better than her. He hasn't thought about it in years. 

He hasn't thought about Frannie in months.

He makes up some business, which isn't hard, and invites a couple of the other local heavy hitters out to the resort a few weeks later. His handlers are curious, but he tells them that Eddy'd mentioned the idea like it was something they'd already planned, so he just went along with it. There's never any sign of what Anita uses the time for. 

They ask about her, too, eventually. He gets one of those cheerful doctor's office messages informing him that it's time for a follow-up on the lingering effects of his supposed car crash. He doesn't know the name of the agent who's posing as his doctor, but all the certificates on the wall say Stephen Cavanaugh. He watches them wearily as a nurse takes his vitals and asks him all the same questions as usual: is he experiencing headaches, pain, stiffness, dizzy spells? Once she's recorded all his invented answers she leaves him alone to change.

It's a long wait. He wonders, not for the first time, how they've put all this in place. Is the nurse another agent? Is the whole office a sham, or did they just quietly replace the real Dr. Cavanaugh the way they did Armando Langoustini?

There's a knock on the door. 

"Come in," calls Ray, and the agent appears: tall, black, looks late forties or early fifties, the same face as the framed family photo on the desk but that doesn't mean anything at all.

"Mr. Langoustini," he says, closing the door behind him. "I'm glad to hear your headaches have been getting better." 

There's no exam. Instead the man who isn't Cavanaugh gives him the latest list of things they want from him: follow this connection, investigate that rumor, and always, always proof. Give us more proof. Find something in writing. Make somebody admit something where we can hear it. Ray reports his latest findings in exchange, ticking off the list he mentally recites every night to keep from forgetting. The agent takes notes on the file that's supposedly Langoustini's chart. That seems needlessly risky to Ray- he's gotten paranoid about writing things down- but he doesn't say anything. 

Once they've gone through everything, the agent leans back in his chair and says, "so, we've heard you've been spending time with a woman. Luz?"

"Luz Romero," Ray agrees. "She's working distribution for Eddy Vasquez. From Chiapas, came into town in early July."

"Vasquez isn't our concern," says the agent. "Do you suspect her of something?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I just figured it would be less of a risk, spending time with someone who never knew Langoustini for real. I know you guys do great research and everything, but even you can't tell me what he was like in bed, and I'd rather not risk my life every time I take a girl home who might notice the difference."

The agent nods slowly. He doesn't look entirely convinced.

"Besides, if everyone thinks I'm pursuing one particular woman, it gives me an excuse not to sleep with as many of the, uh, the other girls," Ray adds, cutting his eyes away to the fake diplomas on the wall. "The prostitutes. I know he used to, I wouldn't put the cover in danger, but this way it's believable if I don't, and I'd just...rather not, if I don't have to."

"All right," says the agent. "I don't have to warn you not to get attached, do I?"

"Of course not," says Ray. "She's a glorified drug runner, I'm not going to fall in love. It's just safe, that's all."

On the way home, with a clean bill of health and another follow-up appointment reminder in his pocket, he thinks about the crash course on undercover they'd given him back in May. Lying to your handlers is supposed to be one of the warning signs of getting in too deep. This is a special case, though; he doesn't know what Anita's working on, and he's not going to risk compromising her mission by revealing it to anyone. It's not like he's protecting a criminal or anything.

He puts it out of his mind.

In February a driver he doesn't recognize picks him up and tells him that Lucky Granello wants to see him. Ray keeps his expression level as he gets into the car, though his stomach twists with sudden nerves. Lucky Granello is supposedly his great uncle, which is worrying enough- he doesn't have much information about Armando's childhood, which means the chances of slipping up around family are always greater- and he's also what amounts to the Bookman's direct superior in the Iguana family. Ray's only met him twice, and that only briefly, but that was more than enough.

When the car heads out of town and onto the stretching desert highway he goes from nervous to _scared_. This is the way that people like him disappear. People who cross the mob get into cars and they never come back, they go quietly into the acres of beaten dust and endless sun and the desert emptiness like he never could have imagined in the crush of Chicago, emptiness unlike even the snow fields near Fraser's cabin.

It's a Tuesday afternoon. He's weak enough, frightened enough, to wonder for a moment what Fraser is doing. En route between the consulate and the two-seven, maybe, if he's still working with Ray's replacement. It's probably cold and gray and awful in Chicago, maybe snowing, maybe exhaust blackening the slush by the roadside. Fraser's probably walking anyway. Ray leans his head against the window and squints at the cloudless Nevada sky, trying to pull himself back into the shell of Langoustini. It isn't over yet. He isn't going to think about his family until he knows that there's no way out.

They pull off the main road at some unmarked point. There's another car waiting, Lucky leaning against it with an air of mild displeasure, like getting dust on his shoes is an inconvenience he'd rather do without. Ray's driver stops the car. There's nothing to do but get out, greet Lucky, try to keep his hands steady and his expression mild. 

"Walk with me," says Lucky, and they go away from the road, leaving the driver lighting a cigarette lazily between the two cars. Ray is too aware of the fact that he's unarmed. 

There's a grave dug, out there in the pathless desert, and a few men standing around it, and- the first inkling of hope- someone else on his knees in front of it. Chris DeMartino, Ray sees as they approach, hands bound behind him, shuddering a little but not fighting his bonds. Crying.

"Caught your man here talking to the police," says Lucky, and suddenly everything makes sense. That's why Anita warned him off; DeMartino was informing, talking to her or to whoever she's working for, and while the FBI would have kept him out of jail his cover would've likely been blown if he'd been implicated. It would've been a mess, at the very least.

Lucky nods to one of the men standing by, who silently hands Ray a gun. 

"You should be more careful choosing your associates," says Lucky. The whole thing is a threat, a warning, and Ray doesn't have a goddamn _choice_. 

"I see that," he says, making a show of looking over the gun before he curls his hand around it, flicks the safety off, aims. "Is it true, Chris?"

DeMartino's smart enough to know that there's only one way this is going to end. He doesn't beg or plead, doesn't try to explain himself, he just looks at the dirt under his knees and waits, and cries. The two of them are on the same side, though DeMartino doesn't know it. Ray's about to kill him for informing on the mob, which is the same damn thing Ray is doing, and if he'd had more than two seconds of warning he could've alerted someone, told Anita or his FBI handlers, gotten the guy away someplace safe. 

It's warm in the desert, even in early February, a spring breeze in the dry air. Everyone is watching him. 

"That's a shame," he says. His hands are steady, and he can't even pretend that he hates himself for it, because it's saving his life. He shoots.

Ray's no marksman, but DeMartino's only a few feet away, just far enough to avoid any chance of splatter on his suit. For some reason the sudden silence when DeMartino's choked crying cuts off is more startling than the sound of the gunshot. Someone takes the gun from him, wipes it down with a handkerchief, and drops it into the grave. Someone else tips the body in after it. Ray follows Lucky back toward the cars, the sound of shovels fading behind them.

He keeps it together long enough to get home, but he's shaky with guilt and relief and horror. God knows he has blood on his hands, these last nine months, but he's never outright executed anyone before. He doesn't think DeMartino had any kids. There's a wife, though; he wonders if anyone will tell her, wonders if she had any idea what her husband was doing.

The only saving grace is that it's been a bad day for Langoustini, too, so Ray doesn't have to hide that he's upset. Still, whatever Langoustini might have felt about one of his lieutenants betraying him, it can't be anything like the way Ray wants to crawl out of his own skin just to get out of this damned place. Everything inside him feels wound tight. He tells Nero to get him two tickets to the opera, leaves a message for Anita even though they're not supposed to have plans tonight, and locks himself in his office for the rest of the afternoon. There's a reason they call Langoustini the Bookman; he has drawers full of accounts to doctor for the family and memorize for the FBI. He gets through a month's worth before Nero knocks to tell him the car is waiting.

They pick Anita up on the way.

 

"This is a surprise," she says, settling next to him on the wide bench seat. "What's the occasion?"

"Just wanted to see your face after a terrible day," he says. Her eyes flick to his for just a moment, sharp and serious, a glimpse of Anita Cortez the police officer behind Luz's coy flirtation.

"Well, I'll do my best to brighten up the evening for you. What happened? Or should I not ask?"

"I found out that someone I trusted was, ah, spilling some company secrets, shall we say," he says, because the least he owes her is an explanation of what happened to her source. "Did you know Chris DeMartino?"

"I...did," she says, weighting the past tense a little, raising her eyebrows at him. He nods confirmation.

"It's a pity," he says, and closes his mouth on everything else he could confess.

They get a box to themselves at the opera, never mind that they'd called for tickets only a few hours before. It didn't even occur to Ray that they might not. He hates that he's started taking these things for granted, that he just expects the way Las Vegas grovels for Langoustini, but he doesn't mind the privacy. His Italian is better than Langoustini's- thank God, that would have been hard to fake- but even so he can barely understand a word of the music, and he mostly thinks the whole thing is pretentious and boring. Langoustini has a season subscription. Sometimes he kind of likes gritting his teeth through it, likes the reminder of a clear, simple difference between the man he is and the man he's pretending to be. Tonight it just makes him tired of the whole thing.

"You all right?" murmurs Anita, under the cover of the orchestra. He shakes his head, and she reaches over and takes his hand.

He closes his eyes and just hangs on to her through the whole thing.

 

In March, Eddy offers him Anita in a business deal.

His exact words are _I'll even let Romero off her leash for you, I know she'll make it worth your while_. He winks, and Ray wants to strangle him. It takes every ounce of his composure to smile back, to make a show of thinking about it, to say, "oh, I'm sure she would" with a leer while he bites back the rage at the idea of Eddy _selling_ her like it's nothing.

He shouldn't say yes.

It'll almost certainly compromise Anita's mission, but there's a part of him insisting that the real Langoustini wouldn't know or care about that. It's just something that might happen in the course of her undercover work, after all. Maybe it would mean that she'd lose Eddy's confidence, and maybe that could even put an end to the whole operation, get her out of danger. It would be nice to pretend that that's his motivation. In reality, though, he just can't stand the idea of Eddy having that power over her. He somehow hadn't thought about it before, that her cover might mean sleeping with him; they'd tell her she didn't have to, of course, but Ray knows how these things go in theory and in practice, knows the difference between what federal regulations can ask you and what you have to do to survive on the ground.

He isn't even sure if he's angrier about it as Ray or as Armando, and he doesn't care. He signs the building in question- and the unspoken territory rights that go with it- over to Eddy on a Thursday, and invites Anita out to dinner on Friday night.

 

He doesn't feel bad about it until he actually sees her, dressed for an evening out in Luz's makeup and what she knows is his favorite dress, even though it's still a little cold for it. She's a professional; surely she can handle her own assignment, probably volunteered for it on her own, unlike him, definitely has her own ways to send an SOS if she needs to get out. What's done is done, though, and while he feels guilty he also can't bring himself to regret it. Maybe if he was a better person, maybe if he was the person he used to be, but ten months in Vegas and he's clinging to survival, and he _needs_ her.

She comes home with him after dinner. Nero's nowhere to be seen, knows when he's wanted and when he isn't, so Ray takes her jacket himself, mixes her a drink, gives her the grand tour. She follows his lead, playing Luz as long as he plays Armando, flirting with little touches and sideways glances as he leads her through the house. They end up in the master bedroom.

"That's the whole of it," says Ray. "What do you think?"

"You have a lovely home."

"Lovelier for having you in it," he tells her, and then waves at the room and mouths, _bugged_. The whole house is. He placed most of them himself, making sure that any confessions he managed to elicit were caught on tape, any illegal business recorded for the courtroom that's supposedly waiting at the other end of all this, if he makes it out alive. Or even if he doesn't; half the point of the tapes is that they'll play without him.

Anita nods her understanding, looking around the room.

"Oh, you have a record player!" she says brightly, and crouches before the low cabinet to look through Langoustini's collection. "I miss these. I'll always remember my mother showing me how to work the needle, I wasn't allowed to use it on my own until I could prove that I wouldn't scratch any of her precious records. Do you mind if I put something on?"

"Go right ahead," he says, and the warmth in his voice isn't faked at all. She flashes him a smile and slips a record out of its sleeve, starts it carefully. It's something jazzy that he doesn't recognize, and she turns it up as loud as possible without killing the illusion that it's mood music. 

She takes off her heels before she comes back over, and without them the difference in their height is even more pronounced. He has to lean down so she can whisper in his ear,

"Is that better?"

"You're brilliant," he whispers back, and she loops both arms around his neck and kisses him.

He isn't expecting it. It startles a noise out of him, makes something desperate shiver awake under his skin. He wants to grab hold of her and never let go, but he settles for brushing her hair back from her face. His hands are shaking like he didn't let them on the borrowed gun.

"We don't have to," he murmurs, just barely making a sound. "We can fake it."

"Do you want to fake it?" 

"No."

"Good," she whispers fiercely, and fists both hands in his shirt to pull him back down.

They don't talk much- the cover of the music isn't perfect, and there's too much at risk- but even so he knows what she's doing when she puts him on his back on the bed. When she pulls his hands away from her he curls them obediently around the slats of the headboard, remembering, and when she rides him like that he closes his eyes and pretends that he's back in a hotel room in Chicago, a little giddy with the adrenaline of taking down LaCroix, with how easy it was to fall into bed with Anita. 

Nothing's felt easy in a long time.

They're both too on edge to draw it out, especially knowing that there are as many nights as they want ahead of them. Anita comes first, one hand braced on his chest and the other between her legs. Once she's gotten her breath back she leans down so her hair falls around his face and whispers, "Come on, come on, Ray," and he's left sobbing out his own release into the sudden quiet as the record finishes. 

Not even his FBI handlers call him by his own name. Ten months, since he heard it last.

He sleeps wrapped around her, and in the morning Anita pulls him into the shower, flicking on the bathroom fan and turning the water as high as it'll go. He doesn't know why he didn't think of that. There are no bugs in the bathroom, and the shower noise will be enough to drown out their voices if they speak quietly, if anyone happens to be listening from the other side of the door.

"I'm sorry," is the first thing he says to her. "I should have told Eddy no, I didn't mean to interfere, I just-"

"No, it's okay. I’m glad you did." He'd forgotten that she's been changing her voice for Luz, exaggerating her accent. He hates that he knows her cover better than he knows her.

"He wasn't-" Ray can't make himself say it, runs his fingers through her hair instead. They can't seem to stop touching each other, either of them. "He didn't make you-"

"I'm fine," she says, which isn't really an answer. "Don't worry, I can still do my job."

He could ask for details, but now that he has the chance he doesn't even really care what she's doing. It's enough to have her here, to steal a moment of safety together, to hear his real name on her lips. He hasn't given that back to her, he realizes, and he wraps her in his arms under the spray and murmurs _Anita, Anita_.

She sighs against his chest. 

"How long are you here for?" she asks, twining their fingers together.

"Until they pull me out. What about you?"

"Until the job is done." Neither of them mention the other way their time in Vegas could end; it doesn't need saying. "Are you okay?"

"I want to go home," Ray says, and it's such a simple confession that he doesn't expect the way his voice cracks halfway through, the way he suddenly has to blink hard and look down at the sleek flecked marble of Langoustini's bathroom. She squeezes his hand.

"I know," she says. "I do too. Thank god you're here."

 

When they finally get out of the shower Anita borrows a bathrobe and they wander down to the kitchen to look for breakfast. There's a cleaning woman there who jumps and gasps something in Spanish when they startle her. Anita introduces herself in the same language while Ray roots in the refrigerator for omelet ingredients, trying not to laugh. Spanish is similar enough to Italian that he can grasp the general shape of what they're saying and he's the only one in the kitchen who knows that absolutely none of it's true. Their families aren't from the same area; the name the cleaning lady gives is as false as the one Anita does. She's one of his FBI handlers, their best way of contacting him when they don't have a meet set up.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd have company this morning," she says. It isn't hard to translate that to _get her out of here so we can talk_. Ray just smiles and says,

"Don't worry, we'll keep out of your way."

He does usher Anita out after breakfast, though, making an excuse about work that's waiting for him. Nero calls her a car and Ray hands her into it, lingering a little to kiss her goodbye. The agent is waiting for him when he steps back inside.

"I don't mean to bother you, but did you want me to clean in the office?" she asks. "I don't want to move anything I shouldn't."

"Of course, I'll clear it out for you," he says, following the script and leads her upstairs.

She closes the door behind them. The bugs don't matter- she's here on the FBI's business, after all- but there's also Nero to worry about. Ray stacks his papers and locks away anything sensitive, keeping up the charade. 

"We need you to broker a weapons deal," she says.

 

When it's all over he wakes up in a hospital bed, slow and foggy from the pain meds for the bullet they're too afraid to take out of him, and he knows it's too late. Word will have reached Vegas by now, and it's the kind of story that spreads fast and takes no prisoners. Better to take down a couple of innocents than to risk another spy in your midst, especially after someone fooled you so well for so long. Nobody in Vegas likes looking stupid.

He wouldn't have had any way to warn her, even if there was time. Her phone number is written in a little book that's two thousand miles away in Langoustini's desk, and he never did find out who she was working for. His own FBI contacts would never believe she was a fellow officer, and probably wouldn't risk trying to send her a message even if they did. He would have tried, though, if he hadn't been unconscious. He would have tried everything.

Fraser comes to see him, and his family, and Fraser again. He slips in between dreams, gets confused sometimes about where he is, which life he's living. They tell him that's the medication. Maybe it is, mostly. Maybe it's the medication that makes him cry when his Ma comes in, too. He drifts off and wakes up to her holding his hand, thinks that she would have liked Anita, tries not to think of all the ways that someone who'd been sleeping with an FBI plant might be killed. Even a regular Vegas girl with nothing to hide probably wouldn't have survived that witch hunt, never mind another cop. There are covers and there are covers, but even the best of them can't withstand that much suspicion.

He thinks about killing Chris DeMartino in the desert. His mother is holding the hand he held the gun in. She gets the garbage can when he says he's going to be sick, and they tell him that's the medicine too, but he thinks it probably isn't.

 

He gets out of the hospital in time to help piece together the rest of the Muldoon case, to pace by the phone waiting for word that Fraser and Kowalski have come out of it alive. Afterward he at least gets a chance to actually talk to Fraser, though it's on a terrible staticky connection and he can't really make himself say anything important, talking around Vegas in fits and starts like he doesn't remember how sentences work. Fraser is sure and steady on the other end of the line, though, and he offers about a million times to come home. Ray brushes him off. He's not going to be back on duty anytime soon, he says, and doesn't add that maybe he's never going back. Fraser offers to come anyway. 

"I've already got my whole family coddling me, Benny, there's nothing left for you to do," he says. "Besides, you gotta take advantage of being a national hero. Make them give you all that leave time. Go on that adventure, you've got Canada and Kowalski, what do you wanna come back down here for?"

"For you, Ray," says Fraser seriously, and Ray has to swallow past a sudden lump in his throat.

"I'll be here," he promises. "You guys go do your thing. It's not every day you get a chance like this."

"Ray Kowalski does live in Chicago, you know," Fraser points out. "Coming down wouldn't necessitate choosing between the two of you."

"Yeah, and how's Chicago working out for you two? Doing real well with all his colleagues, right, and the ex-wife?" 

Fraser makes a politely confused noise and suddenly Ray's just tired, bone-deep exhausted, the way it hits him out of nowhere these days. He's not an idiot; he knows Fraser didn't have to stay more than a month or two to protect Ray's cover, and he saw the way the two of them looked at each other. 

"Listen," he says. "Kowalski was the only thing keeping you sane this year, right? You never wanted to stay in Chicago, you hate the Consulate, I know you do, and he was the only thing that made it bearable. Right?"

Fraser tries to say something, but Ray plows right over him. "So go take him ice camping or whatever, Fraser, just do it. You love somebody like that, you can't wait around. You never know what might happen. Use the time you've got, okay?"

"Ray?" says Fraser cautiously. He sighs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. His shoulder aches.

"Write me a postcard, if you go through anywhere that actually has mail. And don't you dare stay up there forever."

"We won't," Fraser promises. "I'll leave our itinerary with Sergeant Frobisher, just in case. If you need me for anything I'm sure he'll be able to find us. Get well soon, Ray."

"Yeah, thanks," he says, and listens to the empty static for a while after Fraser hangs up, even though it's probably running up the long distance bill. He would have cared about that once. Now he has plenty of money, between the hazard pay from Vegas and taking a bullet in the line of duty. That's something, he thinks, and puts his head down on the desk.

 

It takes months for the bullet wound to heal. Nerve damage, they say, and warn him that the phantom pains and headaches may never completely go away. He goes for follow-up appointments and the nurses ask him the same list of questions that he used to get for Langoustini's supposed car accident. The symptoms are close enough to the ones he used to fake that sometimes he wonders if the universe is trying to tell him something, or making him pay for his sins. Mostly he just wanders around the house, watching bad daytime TV and rereading Fraser's letters. He's always restless and he's always tired. 

In early August, about two and a half months after Muldoon, Fraser writes to say they're coming back to Chicago. He doesn't specify whether they're coming back to settle down or to box up Kowalski's stuff, and Ray's digging for paper and a pen to demand more specifics when Frannie sticks her head around the door frame, looking worried.

"There's a woman at the door looking for you," she says. "Welsh gave us all that lecture about not telling anybody where you lived, so I locked it in her face, but maybe I should have lied and said I didn't know who you were? I don't know how long the door will hold, what do we do?"

"Calm down for a minute, first of all," he says, though he can feel the sick, jittery adrenaline of panic spreading in his veins. "What did she say?"

"Just that she was looking for Ray Vecchio, and her name was Anita."

Ray freezes. It could be a trap, they could have gotten that much out of her, so he makes himself ask,

"Short, dark hair, Mexican? About that tall?" The hand he holds up to demonstrate is shaky. He barely waits for Frannie's nod before he's barreling down the stairs, fighting with the door for a moment- Jesus, Frannie put on all three locks- and flinging it open, and there she is, right on his doorstep.

" _Ray_ ," she breathes, and then she's in his arms, shooting pain in his shoulder from how tightly he's holding on but he doesn't even care. 

"Are you safe?" he makes himself whisper, because it could be a trap even now, but she pulls away and laughs, cupping his face in both hands.

"It's fine, it's safe, I'm done," she says. "It's over. Ray, I thought you were _dead_. They said he shot you."

"Shot, yes, dead, no," he says. "How on earth did you survive it? I would've done anything to warn you, I swear I would've gotten on a plane back to Las Vegas if I could, but by the time they were done operating it was already too late."

"I threw you under the bus," she says, laughing. "Yelled and screamed about betrayal, cursed you and all your family to hell and back, made something up about how you'd been pumping me for information. And all that time I thought you were dead, I came here just to tell your family what I could."

Her eyes are bright and she hides her face in his shoulder. He can't stop himself from raining kisses on her hair, her forehead, her mouth when she looks up at him again. He's dimly aware of Frannie saying something in the doorway, knows they're making a spectacle on the front stoop, but he doesn't care at all. Maybe he'll introduce her to all the neighbors, just for the hell of it, after she's met Ma and the rest of the family. He's got no reason to keep secrets anymore.

It'll be good to use her real name.


End file.
